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Make sure you get yourself a glass (or bottle) of this beautiful champagne

Moet et Chandon Brut Imperiale

Christmas is a great time for champagne, if I could afford it every day would be celebrated with a champagne flute, however until then celebrations and Christmas will suffice. I am often bought a bottle at this time of year for either my birthday or as a Christmas present and I'm always delighted when it is a bottle of Moet.

The brand Moet & Chandon is perhaps one of the best known bottlers of champagne and one of the largest suppliers in the world. It was established in 1743 in France and the company owns vast areas of vineyards to produce the huge quantities of champagne that is consumed each year. The Brut Imperial champagne is a classic Moet & Chandon label.

Brut Imperiale

The Moet & Chandon Brut Imperiale is a very recognisable bottle of bubbly. It is a 75 ml bottle size with a wide base and thin neck. The bottle is a thick and heavy dark green glass the label is a cream and gold with the Moet & Chandon branding. The top of the bottle is covered in gold foil which protects the cork inside as well as making the bottle look fabulous. Around this is a black ribbon with red crest on the front.

The bottle looks elegant and expensive and quality and the liquid inside matches this too.

On popping open the bottle you get a rush of fresh grapes and bubbles escaping from the bottle. You should really pour this into champagne flutes to drink from as these flute shaped glasses keep the fizz in the drink for longer and the flute stem means that you are not affecting the temperature of the champagne.

Once poured you can see that the champagne is a rich golden colour and very bubbly. This must be served from chilled in order to release and make the most of all the lovely aromas and flavours from the champagne. This champagne combines three grape varieties, Pinot noir, Pinot meunier and Chardonnay to make the exquisite taste of Brut Imperiale. Combined these produce quite a dry champagne which I really enjoy, it doesn't have a sickly sweet taste like some which means that you can enjoy more glasses of it! Obviously this is very fizzy and bubbly which gives it the rich edge.

Other fruits included in the champagne include apple and lemon infusions that I can certainly smell in the drink but these are quite faint and subtle to taste. The taste is crisp, refreshing and rich, which glides down your throat and invigorates your insides. It is very moreish and such a quality drink I really wish I could drink it more often. Though perhaps the infrequent special occasion makes the taste of this champagne more special.

ABV 12 % Non-vintage champagne.

This beautiful champagne is available in all of the supermarkets and generally retails for about £31.99. At this time of year it is commonly on special offer and is currently in Asda at £26.99. I hope I will be drinking more of this very shortly. Thanks for reading!

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A refreshing crisp champagne from Moet et Chandon.

Champagne is something that we like to enjoy in my family on special occasions. Once in a blue moon we will have it at a random party when we will share it with friends and last week we had a little gathering at our home with 7 of our closest friends. One of our lovely friends brought along a bottle of this Moet et Chandon to celebrate some good news that they had regarding booking a wedding date. This was definitely a celebration indeed and meant that I had to borrow some champagne glasses from my neighbour so that we could all enjoy it together. Champagne is a drink that I love to enjoy on Christmas Day and there are several brands that I have enjoyed over the past few years including this one, Mumm & Lanson Black Label. Champagne looks good and most people feel a little bit fancy drinking it, I really think it is the ideal party drink when you have good news to celebrate as something about the fizz and the clinking of glasses just seems to bring vibrancy to a room and light up an evening.

Moet really is one of the original brands of Champagne for me and I think it was possibly the first brand that I ever tried back in my teen years. with the ribbon style label and the Moet branding it is easy to spot among other cheaper champagnes on the supermarket shelf and when a bar or restaurant is selling this I can always notice it right away. I love the cream label as it just looks classy and elegant and with the standard cork that you should always find in a champagne bottle you get that satisfying pop once you open it. If you want to open champagne without worrying about poking out an eye then be sure to remove the wire cage and then while holding a tea towel over the cork just give it a gentle twist and it will pop off and you can keep a grip on it. Of course if you want to really show off then you can give it a little shake and pop the cork off in to the air in order to fizz champagne everywhere and really get some attention on yourself. This comes in several sizes and the 75cl one is the one that was enjoyed by my friends and I.

This particular champagne is a blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier and it is described as combining generosity and delicacy with maturity and freshness. That all sounds quite posh to me really and it basically means that you get a champagne that tastes amazing and looks fantastic too. This has fantastic aromas of pear and citrus notes all throughout it that blend wonderfully with the fizz of this and give a beautiful rich, mouth watering taste that goes down so well. It really does have a lovely fruity smell to it too and it is a beautiful golden colour that catches the light and shows off the fizz really well. This does have an alcoholic taste to it, and at 12.5% that is understandable of course, but this taste doesn't make me feel put off and instead it is just the right amount of alcohol and fizz to make me feel giddy and happy when I have been drinking this. This is so simple to drink and goes down a little too well at times and after a few glasses I do notice my mouth is a little drier between sips but this doesn't put me off at all. This is crisp and while it isn't the most thirst quenching drink ever it is refreshing still and all of our friends either love it or are just happy enjoy one glass when toasting a celebration.

I feel fantastic after drinking this drink and while I can get a headache the following morning if I drink too much champagne I do find that this is easily avoided by drinking lots of water before I head to bed in the evening. I have to have quite a few glasses (in excess of 3) before I feel really drunk on this and I am never an angry drunk when I've been drinking champagne (gin is another matter though!).

This really provides me with everything that I could want from a champagne. It is crisp, fresh and fruity with a nice smell to it. It has the right amount of alcohol for one glass to give me a slightly tipsy edge and it is the perfect drink to enjoy with friends when you are celebrating good news such as a wedding or a promotion at work. This is the ideal Christmas drink because you can indulge yourself and even if you just share one glass with the family it is enough to get everyone in a jolly mood and start the afternoon or evening off with the right edge to it, I find anyway.

Price wise you can pick this up for around £30-£35 but there are frequent promotions throughout the year. I tend to have one bottle in my home for celebrations and spur of the moment news such as when my husband got a promotion at work and we wanted to have some family over that evening to toast the good news. This is alcohol of course and should be enjoyed in moderation but a little of what you love does you good I think! There are more expensive champagnes around of course but I find that this one is perfect for the job and nicer than some of the other similar priced brands that are available on the same shelf.

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Moet and Chandon

Since having my baby girl I have obviously had lots of reasons to celebrate and whenever someone comes over to visit her inevitably we have to have a toast and this usually involves some champagne. Actually if it was up to me I would drink champagne on every day ending with a 'y', but hey, that's just me!!

Champagne is an interesting drink. It is produced exclusively within the Champagne region of France, from which it takes its name. In fact only sparkling wine from this region can be called champagne, another other fizzy wine that claims to be champagne is only really sparkling wine unless it is from the Champagne region. Like I've said champagne is a sparkling wine. It is produced by inducing the in-bottle secondary fermentation of the wine to effect carbonation.

My champagne of choice and one that is in my budget at times of celebration is Moët et Chandon. According to an article I read, Moet is one of the world's largest champagne producers and a prominent champagne house. The company holds a Royal Warrant to supply champagne to Queen Elizabeth II. Moët et Chandon was established in 1743 by Claude Moët, and today owns more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of vineyards, and annually produces approximately 26,000,000 bottles of champagne.

What I like about it is that it has a very nice crisp taste and is very refreshing and unlike some sparkling wines it does not give me a headache the next morning. It has a lovely nice light colour and contains plenty of bubbles.

The back of the bottle has the following information:

"since 1743 Moet & Chandon has been the definitive reference for champagne. The quality of its wines expresses the extent and diversity of its fabulous vineyard estate, the largest in Champagne, consisting predominantly of Premier and Grand Cru vineyards. Brut Imperial, the emblematic cuvee of the House since 1869, is the ultimate and universal expression of moet and Chandon. A complete and elegant blend of more than 200 crus of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier, Brut Imperial combines generosity and delicacy with maturity and freshness."

It is best served chilled 8 to 10 degrees and I have to say this is definitely how I prefer it. It contains 12% volume alcohol. You can buy it in 750ml bottles and these cost generally in the region of £30 - £40.

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A well known and trusted brand of champagne which is well worth the extra few pounds!!

Yummy...we bought a bottle of 2000 Moet and Chandon in September 08 for our wedding night, it was reasonably cheap for a bottle of 8 year old Moet Champagne in a beautiful presentation box, £35 from Asda. It was beautiful, I LOVE champagne, it's one of my favourite drinks, and the drier the better!! And the Moet we got was beautiful! The bottle was beautifully presented in a black and gold box (like the kind you get an expensive glass set in), with gorgeous padding, I know the looks of the bottle and box don't change the way the drink tastes, but the presentation of something like this for a special occasion like a wedding is important as far as I'm concerned. The drink itself was beautifully dry, with just enough fizz but not too much that your nose goes fuzzy!! Best served between 1 and 3 degrees (keep it in the freezer for an hour before drinking, it doesn't freeze in this time, so doesn't expand making it perfectly safe and the colder the better with champagne!!), and in tall glasses held at the stem (so as not to warm the champagne with your hand!!!), it should be sipped and enjoyed. Do not go out and buy champagne of this quality if you are planning on just getting sloshed off it, Moet and the likes are there to be enjoyed and savoured not knocked back. This champagne is a fabulous price and really is gorgeous. If you enjoy champagne and don't mind spending a little bit more for a lot more quality, then go for this!!! :-D There are champagnes on an equalling tie to Moet, and they too should be tried!!

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What better way to bring in 2004 than with a bottle of bubbly? Doing a bit of shopping in Asda this morning I was trying to decide on a drink suitable for toasting in the new year when my eyes strayed from the wine shelf to the champers shelf and I just got the taste... Now, the thing with me and champers is I'm a bit of a commoner and can't tell the difference in taste between a £20 bottle and a bottle that costs 45 quid. I'm not pulling the £45 figure out of the air, when our daughter was born one of Marks customers gave us a bottle of vintage Bollinger and I honestly couldn't tell where the extra twenty five quid on a bottle had gone because it didn't taste any better! So the way I go for a bottle of champagne is pick a respected label and go for one of their cheapest varieties. It's in this way that I close tonights celebratory bottle of bubbly. Opting for Moet & Chandon because I know theirs is one of the less dry varieties of champagne I came across a bottle of their Brut for the bargain price of £19.24 - a bargain compared to last year anyway when I remember a bottle of the same stuff cost £25. So you've brought your bubbly. The posh people among us will know the optimum temperature to enjoy your bottle of Moet but as this involves chilling, removing the bottle from the fridge, opening and all sorts of other steps that I can't be bothered with I just stick my bottle in the fridge ready for when I want a glass. Erm... I've opened my bottle of New Years bubbly a bit early, in fact I opened it to bring in the New Year with Beijing at around 5pm... For any of you who don't know what a bottle of Moet & Chandon Brut looks like, it's a rich green glass bottle with a gold coloured label giving all the details you need to make a decision in buying your champagne and the gold foil that's used to hide the cork on most brands of champers. A smart, classy looking bottle. Remov ing the cork takes some doing, in fact I had to ask Mark to open the bottle for me because once I'd worked out how the complex metal opening thingy worked it was too stiff to pop out anyway! No denying how early I'd started drinking today then... It opened with a refreshing *pssssst* and a small amount of the bubbly fizzed out of the top of the bottle but not so much as to make you think half the bottle's wasted. There's no overwhelming smell when the cork comes out of the bottle but after pouring a glass (in a champagne flute of course!) you can have a proper sniff and although Jilly Goldman would probably get hints of rosemary and elephant dung, all I can really smell is a very sharp white wine smell. Sorry, told you I'm a commoner. Anyway, come on! You're going to drink the champers not inhale it so it doesn't really matter too much what it 'hints' of. When you've poured a glass of Moet & Chandon you have to wait for the multitude of bubbles to die down in the glass before you can take a sip. But when you do what a sensation. The champagne tastes like a very good quality white wine (which, in essence, is what it is!), slightly acidic and very dry. It has a refreshingly crisp taste which cops at the back of your throat as you swallow; but in a nice way, not the harsh way a cheap wine will make your throat throb after each swallow. This Moet & Chandon makes your throat tingle with each sip as you swallow copious amounts of bubbles with every mouthful.. I don't usually like dry wines so I find myself surprised every time I enjoy a glass of champagne because it really is a very, very dry drink. Moet & Chandon gets you very drunk, very quickly. After one glass it makes me giggly and talkative, and considering I'm pretty giggly and talkative anyway this isn't always a good thing... like when I'm polishing off a full bottle of Moet Mark's sitting here sober... like now... lol From previous experience I can tell you a bubbly hangover is nasty. The last time I drank champagne in the quantity I'm intending to drink it tonight I had to stay in bed all the next day nursing the mother of all headaches... and dashing to and from the toilet... *eugh, fingers crossed it'll be ok tomorrow* So I've brought in the Beijing new year with a bottle of bubbly and with the bottle of Moet still in the fridge ready for midnight I'd like to wish you all a very Happy New Year! Thanks for reading and see you next year.

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I would like to make it clear that I am neither an alcoholic nor a connoisseur, I do however enjoy a good bottle of plonk and one of my many, many weaknesses in life is champagne! As a regular drinker of Moet and Chandon champagne I find it one of the best around priced at around £30.00 pounds for the Brut Imperial NV variety- it's very well priced and perfect for most occasions, particularly if you going to a party and you don't want to show yourself up but you don't want to bring something too special. If your looking for something a little more special, I would recommend either the Dom Pérignon Vintage Rosé 1993 at around £200 or the Bollinger RD Extra Brut 1990 at around £100. Moet likens it's champagnes to a fashion collection describing them as 'A label which never goes out of fashion' and as ?A Collection of Art' I don't think many could argue with these statements as it is the official champagne of London Fashion Week. The Technical bit I don't really go in for this. I am sure most people are more concerned with getting pissed with a good bottle but here goes!! ... Champagne only comes from champagne as the saying goes...This is a region in the north of France known as 'le terroir' - it has the perfect growing conditions for the grapes which are used to make champagne. This was one of the main reasons for the case of Bulmer v Bollinger- added to the fact it was cider Bulmer were making and trying to pass it off as champagne! Three grapes are used to make champagne, pinot noir and pinot meunier, which are both black. The other grape used is a white chardonnay, which adds a light texture to the champagne. These grapes blended create Moet and Chandon?s unique house style. The champagne is then fermented a second time in the bottle, which gives it a lovely melting, and silky texture. Storing and after care I am told the best way to s tore your bottle is by laying the bottle on it's side in a cool place and importantly maintaining a constant temperature. Kept in this atmosphere depending on type it should last for 1-5 years. Of course champagne should be served chilled, it's the only way to drink it! Buffs with quote a temperature of between 6-8C. To achieve this simply place the bottle in a champagne ice bucket half filled with ice cubes for about half an hour. A friend advised me of this after drinking a considerable amount of the stuff!! After chilling, the bottle needs to be twisted (I can hear you laughing, I am serious!)- Dry and tilt the bottle, remove all wrapping and wire, place thumb on the cork and twist- the cork should ease out without so much as a pop. Pouring This is turning into an etiquette lesson now! - Wipe the bottle dry and pour carefully into crystal champagne flutes. Keep pouring until around 2/3 full. A standard bottle should fill around 6 flutes. Taste I always find champagne hard to describe in terms of words. It's a pale gold in colour with lots of small bubbles. It smells like a good wine delicately mixed with lime, the is taste well balanced, and generally an all round delicious bottle of champagne The 'Collection' as it's known ranges from half bottles of Moet and Chandon to the Nebuchadnezzar, which is a massive 20 bottle and would fill 120 flutes- although you?d need help pouring them and drinking them I suspect!! Other sizes in the Collection are: Magnum (2 standard bottles)- I would call this the optimum size!! Jeroboams (4 bottles) Methuselahs (8 bottles) Salmanazars (12 bottles) Balthazars (16 bottles) and magnificent Nebuchagnezzar (at 20 bottles)- this one costs around £750.00. I have found that the best place to drink Moet and Chandon is aboard Concorde- whether it's the altitude or knowing you have to drink more because you arri ve before you take off! Or then again it could be the fact that everything is served on Royal Doulton table wear, gleaming silverware and only the finest crystal. ( I am one of those who looks!) I think that the only thing left to say is enjoy! Wonderful champagne in wonderful surroundings with fab company.... always a perfect end to the day!!

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Five pound millionaires is what we call them in my local gaff, buying the round for the lads and splashing that twenty quid note around hoping that noone will realise it's the only money they have and that they will have the rest of their drinks supplied by the others for the rest of the night. Sometimes these twerps with fashionable facial hair and cool clothes will splash out a bottle of the old moet just to impress the ladies. Moet is the first champagne that will come to many peoples heads when thinking of champagne, it does with me anyway (not that I often think about champagne like). They sponsor events and seem to be the slut of champagnes. Anyway about a year ago I won five grand on a free bet in my local bookies, it was my first ever bet so obviously I was slightly pleased. At the time I was working in my local pub (purveyors of fine wines and slutty champagne) and was actually working that day till 6 p.m. So when everyone was asking me what I would be spending my not so hard earned cash on I was thinking that I wouldn't mind a bottle of the soft stuff. I had consumed moet before but it would always be when I was already drunk or a small glass. I wanted to be a five bob millinaire for the day so I chilled a bottle until I finished work. Everyone knows what the bottle looks like but if you don't (peasants) then it is dark green with golden foily stuff on the neck and the simple cream label towards the bottle with Brut Imperial Moet & Chandon written on in nice black writing, very classy. Once opened (and trying not to spray your mates with it F1 style) and our glasses filled, me and my mate sipped inquisitively on the bubbly fluid (ooooer). Now apparently these things do have a smell but this just smells acidic to me and the taste is obviously grapey but it is just too gassy really you can really taste the bubbles. Now I am not keen on wine realy so I wouldn't expect to love this but the appeal escapes me, it's like twen ty five quid for a 750ml bottle and it just doesn't taste nice, it dries out your mouth and empties your wallet like the slut she is. A bottle hardly goes very far because its always being shared with loads of people, keep it to yourself I say. Even when it isn't shared though it does go down well (meaning you can down it without having to really taste it) and does the job, e.g get you mullered. Now this is just a mid range champagne as far as I can see and if you want better you will have to pay more but me and my mate Captain Morgan laugh at you who are buying this overpriced tipple as we swig the finest liquers known to man. Leave this to the posh lot, and where's me rum??????????????? Ok you fact junkies i'm sorry if there is no complete history of the frickin moet vineyards or something but if you really really want to know the history then point your browser at moet.com and read the facts there. I am not going to just copy the website for brownie points and I don't claim to be an expert on the subject. I am just writing about my own experience, rate as you see fit. cheers Paul and the Captain

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Moet and Chandon - the pinacle of retail champagne houses today. This brut imperiale encaptures over 300 years of fine champagne making in the champagne region. Light, with a predomiant biscuity texture, this champagne is an ideal must for weddings, parties, etc. It usually retails at around £25 in most shops and although this may seem steep at first...it all becomes worth it on popping that cork - with the distinctive moet and chandon cage, of course. It should be served - like ALL champagnes - in a tall, uncut champagne flute. Avoid any other type of wine-glass (or beaker!) as you cannot appreciate the full experience of the famous bubbles without the appropriate glass. Chill for around 10 minutes...the ideal serving temp is around 9 degrees - anything above or below that will dampen the effect of the champagne...only fill the glass 3/4 of the way up...although not a form of wine to be appriciated aromatically, a full glass will also dampen the effect of the champagne...be sure to watch out for that cork also! Use a dish-towel to remove the cork after carefully removing the cage...this will prevent any premature stoppage to the party!